She raised the lid. It was by the slightest amount, but the light and noise were astonishing.
The room was full of what sounded like a huge machine, as if the room had been eaten alive and she was listening from within the belly of some mechanical beast. Wheels clattered across a rough stone floor.
The noise was getting closer. She raised the lid a little more, a fraction more light. Something dark was swinging in and out of the path of light. The noise stopped, to be replaced by another sound. His breathing was fast and uneven, the sound of exertion.
Through the walls of the house and the ceiling of the basement, a car engine was coming closer. She willed it to slow down and stop but after it passed the nearest point, the sound started fading away into the distance.
He was close at hand and there was a foul smell.
He stopped. And then quickening footsteps, moving away from her, told her that he had been suddenly called away.
He was heading up a flight of steps and then she heard his feet on the ceiling above her. Hurrying, hurrying, hurrying.
She was alone again, in the tank, in the basement.
She lifted the lid a little more, then raised her head, looking through the crack from as many angles as the confined space allowed.
A vertical metal pole and what looked like a saddle suspended in midair. She pushed hard and the small crack became wider. There was a metal arm connected to the cradle. It was a lifting device. Was it the thing on wheels that had made a racket on the concrete floor?
He was going to use it to lift her.
If she was incapacitated through lack of air, he wasn’t going to kill her in the tank. He was going to take her somewhere else to do that.
She would lift the lid only for air now.
She knew enough.
She needed to conserve all her strength for what was coming.